As teenagers growing up in California some three decades ago, sisters Rena Mundo Croshere and Nadine Mundo were too ashamed to tell friends the strange true story of their early years.

What was so strange? They grew up on a farm where environmentalism and vegetarianism were practised and soy milk products were made and sold. This sounds like any number of Earth-minded enterprises on the go.

“That’s because you’re Canadian!” says older sister Rena, laughing as she sips from a Starbucks cup.

“But for Americans and L.A. in the mid-1980s, not so much. If you said you came from a commune, it was, ‘Oh, a cult? You’re a Commie?’”

“Don’t forget, it was also the time of Ronald Reagan,” adds Nadine.

The farm they came from was actually The Farm, the largest hippie commune in North America, located on some 800 hectares of land in rural Tennessee. This “intentional community” was founded in 1971 after gangly and bespectacled Stephen Gaskin, a charismatic ex-Marine, led a 60-vehicle caravan of settlers from San Francisco to create their own version of Utopia: one that included group marriages, vows of poverty, and bans on makeup, alcohol, birth control and anger.

A funny thing happened on the path to cosmic grooviness, as Rena and Nadine lay out in American Commune, their personal documentary of discovery having its world premiere at Hot Docs. The final of three sold-out screenings is Friday at the U of T’s Hart House Theatre.

The Farm morphed from being a pot-smoking hippie commune into a profit-making agrarian collective, upending many of its founding intentions (and eventually dethroning Gaskin in a palace coup). Along the way, it developed into a respected innovator in green technology and farming, midwifery and global charity relief.

But the changes didn’t come easily and many of The Farm’s 1,200-plus members left the commune: including Rena and Nadine, who quit in 1985 at their respective ages of 12 and 9, and moved to California with their mother, who by that time had split from their father.

Today, the sisters work as TV producers in Los Angeles, smartly dressed and with carefully applied lipstick. But American Commune afforded them the opportunity to explore their tangled roots at The Farm, where they were both born and grew up. They were so disconnected from mainstream U.S. culture, they didn’t recognize the Pledge of Allegiance when they first heard it as teens.

They spoke to the Star during a visit to Toronto and Hot Docs this week:

Q: Most films about communes and hippie life always seem to end on a downbeat note about a failed social experiment. But American Commune is different, more bittersweet nostalgia than regret. What were your intentions going in?

A: (Rena) When we set out to make the film, part of it was really just us wanting to reconnect with our past and understand more about where we came from. Every time you see a commune movie, it’s this tragic cult and we just wanted to tell a more nuanced story. For us, there were obviously some negative things, but it really was a pretty amazing experiment and experience, and I think we were greatly influenced by it.

(Nadine) We left the commune as kids, so we have childhood memories. But we didn’t really know how it worked and about Stephen Gaskin the leader, and why it fell apart and all the inner workings. We just wanted to rediscover our past selves.

Q: American Commune has a lot of archival footage, including TV reports by the likes of Walter Cronkite. Did you have trouble tracking it down or gaining access to it?

A: (Rena) We did a ton of research over a seven-year period. All the major news channels did stories on The Farm, including Walter Cronkite. We mined from all different sources, including a lot of Canadian footage from the CBC. There was a sister farm in Ontario. Canadians have always been on The Farm, ha-ha!

Q: A lot of those archived news reports have people expressing fears about the residents of The Farm.

A: (Rena) I think when they first moved to Tennessee, the locals were terrified of them. They had never seen a hippie in person, so what they were seeing was all the protesters from San Francisco or Berkeley or all over the country. They thought, ‘Those crazy hippies!’ . . . Our father is Puerto Rican and the town where The Farm is, called Summertown, is about 20 miles from where the KKK was founded. Our mother is a white Jewish woman, so if they ever left the commune together for any reason, there would definitely be a lot of racism. But as time went by, they realized we wanted to found a peaceful society. They were farmers and The Farm members ending up learning their farming techniques from the locals, because they’d been farmers there generations.

(Nadine) There’s an old guy called Homer who warned The Farm members on their first night in Summertown, ‘You f--- around, I’ll shoot your balls off!’ That’s what he told our dad. He was old moonshiner. But our parents and all The Farm founders ended up totally getting along with him. He showed them all his logging techniques and farming — but not moonshine!

Q: How did the group marriages work — or not — at The Farm?

A: (Rena) It wouldn’t be polygamy because it wasn’t one man and several wives, it was two couples who would marry each other. They called it a “four marriage” and it was something that Stephen did and that several other families did. They were trying to create this alternative society and elevate themselves spiritually. For a lot of the four-marriage couples, they felt that if you could let go of attachments and share the person you’re most in love with, you could elevate yourself spiritually. And obviously it didn’t really work, especially for the kids. It was really painful and difficult for them.

(Nadine) Stephen at one point was in a six marriage, apparently. It didn’t last long and dwindled to five and four and then to two.

Q: Did you ever go back to The Farm, prior to making American Commune?

A: (Nadine) When we were filming, that was the first time we had gone back. When we moved to L.A., we assimilated into pop culture and we didn’t really keep in touch with anyone inside The Farm, although our mom kept in touch.

Q: You wait until nearly the end of the movie until you tell the story about what Stephen Gaskin is doing today. Why is that?

A: (Rena) We really want to build his character in the archival footage because we had such amazing archival footage of him. He is such a strong character and his arc follows the rise and fall of this commune. I think we felt like it was good to have some mystery with him.

Q: Do you see him as a good or bad guy?

A: (Rena) A good guy, still part of the community, although no longer leading it. When we were kids, though, we were terrified of him. He was the authority figure in the community and some of our memories of him are just him being this sort of guru, you know? You could feel his presence in the room. If he was walking down the road, you’d notice. His rule was the rule of The Farm.

Q: What is The Farm today?

A: (Nadine) It’s a community with a few hundred people. The land is still held in common, but everyone that lives there has their own jobs and their own houses and makes their own money. It’s not where everything is pooled and shared.

Q: Do you look back at The Farm now and consider it to be naive or brave?

A: (Rena) I feel like it was incredibly courageous. Our mom was a Jewish American Princess, living in Beverly Hills going to Berkeley U. Just to drop out and leave everything behind and get on a bus and think that you’re going to create this alternative society? Can you imagine? They taught themselves all this. It’s incredibly courageous and at a certain level they had to be naive to actually do that. It’s a leap of faith. It’s a little crazy.

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